CTA Tattler

He also said that fuel costs for the quarter were $3.2 million over budget. This doesn't contradict the idea that it "could" create a $25 million overage for the year. But to give perspective, it annualizes to something closer to $12 million.

To give even more perspective, it looks like "system generated revenue" will work out to close to $500 million, and you have to add in a similar amount in state operating subsidy.

Fuel is an issue for CTA, but even a $12 million overage is about 1% of the budget. Increased revenues should overwhelm fuel costs for CTA if other costs are held in line.

He also noted that labor costs had been higher than budgeted.

Many transit systems and large fleets buy fuel futures. That is, they forge huge, multi-month contracts when prices are low at those low prices. In the event that the long-term contract runs out while prices are high, they buy on the spot market until prices become more favorable.

I've done a little Googling, and I can't seem to find any old press releases where the CTA brags about their purchasing prowless like most other big transit systems.

So does the CTA not buy when the price is low? Did they not buy enough when the price was lower? Did they buy low, but leave some escape clause?

Sure, it's possible that right now they're having a crisis because they're between contracts, but wouldn't being between contracts be the news just as much as high fuel prices are? Or have they not been using contracts, but buying on the spot market for so long that the lack of a contract is no longer news?

As for labor costs, a few months ago wasn't Ron bragging about how he and the unions worked together to keep them in check? Did Ron's people go ahead and budget for even lower costs than they knew would be the real costs? Or has something unpredictable happened that threw-off what should have been good budgeting?

Seems to me that there's been some fudging of budget figures all along, and some of that fudging is coming home to roost now. How much more bad budgeting is still being hidden?

"On the bright side, ridership figures for the year so far are 1.8% over the same period from last year. "

Why is that bright? That's a pretty small number considering how much gas prices have risen. I think most transit systems have had much higher growth that this. Ridership on Metra, for example, has risen something like 5%. Of course, much of the reason for the CTA's small ridership increase is clearly the numerous construction projects going on throughout the rail system. So the poor ridership numbers are likely understandable and temporary. But they are poor numbers. Everything needs to be looked at in context. It is not wise to decide that something is good simply because it is up or bad because it is down. If a tornado wiped out a third of the population and the jobs in Chicago and the CTA then posted a ridership decrease of 3%, that would not be bad. In fact, that would be extraordinary.

Rusty,

Do we really want to CTA buying fuel futures? Imagine if the price drops, the public outcry over money gambled and lost on futures, no matter what the dollar amount.

A 1.8% increase in CTA ridership is a lot when you consider the daily ridership is in excess of 1.6 million. Metra's daily ridership is about 300,000 if memory serves.

Raw numbers have nothing to do with whether a percentage increase should be considered high or low.

I'm with Rusty on this one. The futures market consists of many people's best bets on where the market will actually be. Are we confident CTA would bet better? Yes, Southwest Airlines has done very well by buying fuel futures. But that's because they were right. They could have been wrong. Many other smart traders were trading the opposite side of those futures contracts.

TriMet (Portland, OR): April 2008 was up 11.6% over April 2007.

New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year, with New York's MTA buses showing 10.9% alone!

In Denver ridership was up 8 percent in 2008Q1 over 2007Q1 despite a fare increase in January and a slowing economy.

So I'm with MK. A mere 1.8% increase given context is a failure. A big failure.

The rail maintenance projects may be a big part of it, but the biggest ridership gains are on the weekends when those projects have the greatest negative impact!

IMHO, the problem is that in Chicago, the general thought is that only people who can't afford to drive take CTA -- poor people. The unwashed. Litterally.

In the big East cities (especially New York), using transit has been a necessity for ages, and people who don't own cars aren't looked upon as freaks. It's easier for people who've never used transit to take the plunge without feeling like they've dropped a class on the economic ladder.

In the West, going "green" is the big fad. Transit systems aren't the home of the unwashed. They're the home of the trendy urbanittes who care about the planet. Getting on the bus can be a boost to one's social stature.

So whare are the PR campaigns from the CTA? Are they so busy creating Powerpoint presentations to hide the real stories in the raw numbers that they don't have time to do any PR to build ridership?

When the "bright side" is that there was a minute ridership increase while other systems around the country are setting records, then things are pretty grim.

So what exactly is it that Ron is excelling at? Looking pretty under pressure? Putting out the best Powerpoint presentations this town has ever seen? What is he really doing? Where is the leadership? Where are the successes that really matter? Or was that pumped-up spin piece a couple weeks ago as good as it gets?

Sorry, but I don't see any bright sides in the report. There could have been. There were many oportunities lost. And quite a bit of failed leadership involved.

If this were China, where news from the outside world is hard to come by, trumpetting a 1.8% gain might work. But in a world where we can see how misserably it compares to other systems, it is an outright failure.

It should be noted that NY in particular has aggressively ramped up their toll rates for vehicles crossing the Hudson and East river in the beginning of the year. You put $8 tolls on every major expressway leading into downtown, roadblock surface routes to make people use the highways, and couple that with rising gas prices you'd see Metra and CTA ridership explode.

For comparison the highest toll in the entire Illinois Tollway system is the $2 charged at the Sprng Creek toll plaza on 355.

The PowerPoints have their own slow zone. Anyone try to take a look at the President's Report from the May board meeting? The thing's so massive and full of shiny stuff it takes forever to download using either a cable modem or DSL. The pdf is supposed to be 24 pages, but I wasn't able to get past page 8. Maybe a new metric should be obfuscation. This report would qualify as being on target 100% of the time.

Right click over the links for the reports and save them to your hard drive. They download quickly and open just fine.

Actually according to the President's report overall system ridership is up 8.9% for April 2008 versus the same month last year...

I don't really care enough to deal with 5 gazillion MB of bs that I then have to delete. One would think that someone who was just called out by snarky Sneed for wasting time with PowerPoints would make the presentation as streamlined and accessible as possible to the tax and fare-paying public. The discrepancy in the ridership figures could be that the CFO's report had the 1.8% number and that was for the first quarter whereas the President's report was comparing month to month.

The year-to-date figures thru March (1.8 percent increase in ridership) are distorted low because the spring break dip happened in March this year and April last year, which also distorts this year's April numbers over last year's (up 8.9 percent) high. When you add it all up thru April, this year ridership is 165.5 million, a 4 percent increase over last year's 159.2 million thru April.

So the lesson here - other than the need to be very careful when interpreting statistics - is that the CTA isn't really doing that badly. I'm not at all convinced that the differences between Chicago and east and west coasts that Rusty cited actually exist - contempt for transit and the poor is universal in this country (just go over to the San Francisco Chronicle's comment boards to see how residents of that supposedly enlightened city talk about transit) and the trendiness of being green is equally widespread (and equally rarely practiced).

If New York is outperforming Chicago, it's probably because denser settlement there makes it easier for commuters to switch to transit. If transit-poor cities like Denver are outperforming Chicago, it's probably because high gas prices are finally giving people an incentive to try out the relatively new light rail systems - there's more room to expand when you start from extremely low numbers.

If we want to increase the ridership rates, we should increase the cost of driving (gas taxes, congestion pricing) and encourage more high-density, mixed-use development in the city and suburbs alike. There's a lot of potential, especially in the devastated neighborhoods of the South and West Sides, for new transit-friendly development - if only we were willing to invest the resources necessary to renew those neighborhoods.

"If New York is outperforming Chicago, it's probably because denser settlement there makes it easier for commuters to switch to transit."

With the exception of cabs, I didn't know that anyone drives in New York at all. At least in Manhattin, my observation from the week I was there a few years ago is that around 98% of people get around by public transportation, cabs, or walking. The other 2% obviously really need their car desperately or they wouldn't be spending probably 8 times as much to park (which takes longer than all the alternatives). Perhaps it is somewhat different in the outer bearous. But, in any case, gas prices would likely have much less of an effect in New York City than in Chicago since transit really doesn't compete with driving all that much in New York.

"If we want to increase the ridership rates, we should increase the cost of driving (gas taxes, congestion pricing) and encourage more high-density, mixed-use development in the city and suburbs alike. There's a lot of potential, especially in the devastated neighborhoods of the South and West Sides, for new transit-friendly development - if only we were willing to invest the resources necessary to renew those neighborhoods."

First of all, increasing gas taxes would be the absolute stupidest thing for anyone to do at this time, not only politically but also practically. Second, all your other suggestions are going to happen anyway. Gas prices have risen and they are not going to come down(and will likely keep rising for awhile). As a result, people are going to want to live in areas where they have to drive less. That means "transit oriented development in the city and suburbs alike". That is where there is going to be (and already is, to a large extent) a huge shift towards where the new residential and commercial construction occurs. The world you will love and seem to have a very strong interest in (based on the dozens and dozens of posts I've seen you make here, the Tribune comments board, and other places) is coming. There is no need to expect the government to do very much to get this accomplished. If they tried, they would most likely screw it up and things will backfire. It is going to happen anyway. And it is going to happen by market forces.

MK,

You spoke about investing the resources in the south and west sides. The private sector has finally clued in, just look at the changes in the South Loop, development all the way west to I-94 and south to nearly 30th street, and the near west side towards Ashland is no slouch either, and river north as well.

Two of us (working professionals) live very happily in a modest 1000 square feet at roosevelt and state. Yes, we could get 3 or 4 times that in, say Batavia, but we have 3 train lines, and countless buses all within 2 blocks.

Oh, 3 grocery stores to choose from in walking distance, dozens of restaurants, the entire loop and mag mile a few train stops away, chinatown, sox games, the list goes on and on.

It's a great life. And while gas prices trickle through the supply chain to us, we're not at the BP filling up for $4.25 a gallon.

I preach the virtues of downsizing into city life everywhere I go, I couldn't be happier in my decision. A smaller home, less stuff to buy and clean, no commute. Oh,and feeling good about it all in the face of carbon footprints and global climate issues.

Try it people. You don't "need" what the suburbs are offering.

There are two problems with just letting the market produce higher density living. First, government zoning regulations in most suburbs actually prevent mixed-use development, so we have to take action to change those regulations. And second, as we're already seeing in all the neighborhoods from the South Loop to Hyde Park, Logan Square, and many others, the market provides well for those with money, but those without are basically screwed.

One of the key goals of Daley's public housing Plan for Transformation was to free up valuable urban real estate currently occupied by poor people. The destruction of the public housing projects combined with rising rents are already driving poor people to the urban fringes, where they are even more isolated from jobs and transit than they already were. As usual, the government and the market work *together*, not at odds, to serve the interests of the well-off at the expense of the poor. So we need to push the government to do what the market will not - give everyone the opportunity for good housing.